Is there any occasion in public life more nausea-inducing than the Oscars?
I sometimes wonder. I never watch it of course, but any engagement with the outside world at this time of year involves 2nd hand acquaintance with the awards ceremony cavalcade, an event at which those successful at climbing the greasy pole mingle with their fellows, network furiously, tout for business and pretend to be gracious when they don't win anything, all the while preening before the proles circling resentfully down below, those less fortunate, less rich, less talented, less beautiful and less sycophantic.
Oh, and less pretentious. Here's the actress Viola Davis, accepting her award for best supporting actress in Fences - "I became an artist and thank God I did because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life", Ms Davis gushed. As an artist of a sort myself, I can confirm that we are no better at celebrating our lives than any other demographic. Is it wrong of me to hope that Ms Davis is obliged to return to waiting tables fairly soon, so she can better reflect on what it means to be lacking in self-awareness?
But anyway, on to the main business of this year's ceremony, namely the mix-up which led two accountants from PWC handing Warren Beatty an envelope containing the wrong card for the winner of Best Picture. Readers will be aware that La La Land was announced and that the makers were some way into their acceptance speeches before the mistake was corrected.
I've seen both La La Land and the eventual winner, Moonlight, and thought both over-praised. La La Land's purported critique of Hollywood is toothless to say the least compared to Altman's The Player (its one good joke is at the expense of the ubiquity of the Toyota Prius: that's how satirical it is), its plot implausible (there's neither showing nor telling why the principals' career commitments should have ruined their relationship) and, in a musical whose McGuffin is devotion to jazz, its score is unforgivably lame and bland.
As for Moonlight, a coming of age movie about a young gay black boy, it is well-made, well-acted, and has a good score but is too long and just a bit dull. The most interesting plot development (boy goes to prison for beating his bully and upon release becomes a successful drug-dealer) is skipped over entirely. Yes, being bullied for "being a faggot" is pretty horrible (although surely no worse than being bullied for being posh or for liking classical music or for anything else you can think of), but good art entertains as well as informs. I could see no reason for Moonlight being a film as opposed to say an article in the paper. And what would that article have said? Young gay people get bullied at school? Not exactly news.
So in the age of Trump a film with gay black people wins Best Picture. Not surprising, not in a climate where Meryl Streep can be lauded for making an acceptance speech in which she lambasts the new President - surely the least career-threatening outburst in the history of thespianism.
Donald Trump will probably not have been watching the Oscars, but I expect that when he heard about the cock-up by some other narcissistic fools he will have laughed long and hard at his tormentors.
PS The two best films I've seen this year were Hell or High Water, a contemporary western in which Jeff Bridges pursues two bank-robbers trying to raise the money to prevent foreclosure of the family ranch, and Toni Erdmann, a three-hour German comedy about a divorced father's relationship with his daughter. Hell or High Water, relentlessly entertaining but insufficiently portentous for Oscar-bait, features Bridges on magisterial form with his True Grit Rooster Cogburn shtick turned down to acceptable levels. Toni Erdmann has a sex scene which ensures you'll never look at a cup-cake again; and for all its length Moonlight seemed a hell of a lot longer.
